Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/94

 gesting indirectly the later establishment of the Royal Academy.

Although, as we have seen, Hogarth's prints did not want for purchasers, his original pictures remained unsold. Early in 1745, ‘still,’ to use his own phrase, ‘ambitious of being singular,’ he disposed of them by an auction of his own devising, the details of which are given in the ‘Genuine Works,’ 1808, i. 116–18. The ticket to view them at the Golden Head was as original as the scheme of sale. Already, à propos of some aspersions which had been cast upon his late father-in-law's paintings at Greenwich Hospital, he had printed in the ‘St. James's Evening Post’ of 7 June 1737 an energetic protest against the sham masterpieces—‘the Holy Families, Madonnas, and other dismal dark subjects’—which the picture-jobbers of his day so persistently imported from the continental ‘high art’ factories; and in the ‘Battle of the Pictures,’ by which he invited the attention of purchasers to his own performances, he depicts a spirited engagement between the ‘black masters,’ as he styled them, and the Hogarthian forces—a conflict in which, as may be guessed, the latter are easily victorious. But the traditions of connoisseurship were, nevertheless, too much against the independent satirist, and his unique gallery brought miserable prices. ‘A Harlot's Progress’ fetched 88l. 4s.; ‘A Rake's Progress’ 184l. 16s.; ‘The Strolling Actresses’ 27l. 6s.; and ‘The Four Times of the Day’ 127l. 1s.; making for nineteen pieces but a total of 427l. 7s. With every allowance for the eccentricity of the artist, and the unconventional character of the transaction, the amount realised is still difficult to comprehend.

We are now nearing his greatest work. In April 1743 he had advertised the forthcoming engravings of the famous ‘Marriage à-la-Mode,’ and in the ‘Battle of the Pictures’ he had given a hint of the same series by exhibiting one of them viciously assaulted by a copy of the ‘Aldobrandini Marriage.’ His announcement laid stress upon the fact that in these ‘modern occurrences in high life,’ care would be taken ‘that there may not be the least objection to the decency or elegancy of the whole work, and that none of the characters represented shall be personal,’ an assurance which seems to imply that objections on these grounds had been taken to some of his former efforts. The plates, six in number, were issued in April 1745, the subscription-ticket being the etching called ‘Characters and Caricaturas.’ In accordance with the artist's promise, they were ‘engrav'd by the best masters in Paris,’ G. Scotin executing plates i. and vi., B. Baron plates ii. and iii., and S. E. Ravenet plates iv. and v. Fifty years later (1795–1800) they were again reproduced in mezzotint by B. Earlom. For a description of this excellent social study the reader must go to the commentators; or, better still, to the paintings themselves, which, fortunately, have found a final asylum in the National Gallery. As in the case of the previous series, Hogarth, unwarned by experience, again resorted to an auction after his own fashion, in order to dispose of the original canvases. The bidding was to be by written tickets, and the highest bidder at noon on 6 June 1751 was to be the purchaser. Picture dealers were rigorously excluded. The result of these sagacious arrangements was disastrous, only one bidder, a Mr. Lane of Hillingdon, near Uxbridge, putting in an appearance. The highest offer having been announced as 120l., Mr. Lane made it guineas, at the same time magnanimously offering the artist some hours' delay to find a better purchaser. No one else presented himself, and Mr. Lane became the possessor of the artist's best work, and the finest pictorial satire of the century, for the modest sum of 126l., which included ‘Carlo Maratti frames’ that had cost Hogarth four guineas apiece. It may be added that the plates were described in Hudibrastic verse in 1746; that they prompted Dr. John Shebbeare's novel of the ‘Marriage Act’ in 1754; and that they are credited by the authors with suggesting Colman and Garrick's farce of the ‘Clandestine Marriage’ in 1766. Hogarth also meditated a companion series depicting ‘A Happy Marriage.’ But after some tentative essays, he abandoned his project, doubtless because the subject presented too little scope for his peculiar qualities.

Besides the ‘Marriage à-la-Mode,’ the only work for 1745 is the subscription-ticket (‘Mask and Palette’) for the portrait of ‘Mr. Garrick in the Character of Richard III,’ which Hogarth engraved with Grignion, and issued on 20 June 1746. For this painting Mr. Duncombe of Duncombe Park in Yorkshire paid him 200l., a price which compares favourably with the paltry amount realised by the tragedy of the Squanderfields. To the next few years belong one or two of his most notable portraits. In August 1746 he etched a characteristic likeness of Simon Fraser, lord Lovat, when that cunning and impenitent old Jacobite halted at St. Albans on his way to London for trial; and in the following year appeared a plate by Baron after his portrait of James Gibbs [q. v.], the famous architect. Last, engraved by his own hand, comes in 1749 his admirable likeness of himself and his dog Trump, one of the most successful of his works. Among his mis-